The Revision · 2025 week 3

Anybody can show you what they said in week 3.

This shows you what week 3 should have said. On the left is the ranking that got published that Sunday. On the right is the same week, rebuilt once the season had finished and every opponent had shown what they were actually worth.

Nothing about a team’s own results changes between the two columns. Only what its opponents turned out to be worth.

2025 week 3 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 3

once the season finished

1Georgia
2Oklahoma
3Utah
4NC State
5Memphis
6LSU
7Ole Miss
8Iowa State
9Houston
10Texas A&M
11Mississippi State
12Tulane
13California
14Navy
15Auburn
16Illinois
17Vanderbilt
18Georgia Tech
19USC
20Nebraska
21Indiana
22Oregon
23North Texas
24Ohio State
25Maryland

Texas A&M1
Iowa State3
NC State4
Georgia5
Oklahoma6
Oregon7
LSU8
North Texas9
Illinois10
Ohio State11
Indiana12
Ole Miss13
Vanderbilt15
Tulane16
Mississippi State18
Georgia Tech20
Houston22
Utah23
USC25
Nebraska27
Auburn28
Memphis29
California30
Navy40
Maryland46

Read a line’s angle as the size of the mistake. Flat means the week held up. The right-hand column is each team’s place among all 136 teams once the season was over, so a jump in those numbers is a team from outside this 25 moving in ahead of them. Of the 25 teams published that week, 24 ended up somewhere else and 1 stayed exactly where they were.

counts and the mean below are a tally of the published rank_delta field over the rows shown · 2025 week 3 · 5ec6d1fe

24 of 25teams in the published top 25 were in the wrong spot, measured against the finished season

9.96places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 11.46

Both figures are about the same week. The top 25 is the part people argue about. The whole field is the part that would catch this model out, and it goes up every week whether it flatters anybody or not.

The receipts, team by team

These are the six teams the finished season moved furthest in week 3, and most of them are outside the published top 25. A poll that only ever showed you its own top 25 would never have to show you that.

Kentucky86 to 43
Nothing about Kentucky’s 2-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-1
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.06
power
-3.7¹⁰⁷
résumé
2.6
gap
+6.3
90% rank range
19 to 133
Buffalo42 to 84
Nothing about Buffalo’s 2-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-1
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.16
power
4.8⁴⁸
résumé
14.2
gap
+9.5
90% rank range
2 to 129
South Carolina87 to 48
Nothing about South Carolina’s 2-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-1
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.06
power
-3.0¹⁰³
résumé
3.2
gap
+6.1
90% rank range
13 to 132
Western Kentucky55 to 89
Nothing about Western Kentucky’s 2-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-1
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.12
power
-1.1⁸⁹
résumé
11.5
gap
+12.6
90% rank range
6 to 133
App State53 to 86
Nothing about App State’s 2-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-1
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.13
power
-0.8⁸⁶
résumé
10.2
gap
+11.0
90% rank range
12 to 133
North Carolina50 to 79
Nothing about North Carolina’s 2-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-1
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.13
power
-2.8¹⁰²
résumé
10.2
gap
+13.0
90% rank range
13 to 132

And inside the published top 25

Navy14 to 40
Nothing about Navy’s 3-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-0
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.46
power
13.5¹¹
résumé
60.0
gap
+46.5
90% rank range
11 to 114
Memphis5 to 29
Nothing about Memphis’s 3-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-0
schedule odds
1 in 4
rank key
0.65
power
17.8⁶
résumé
60.0
gap
+42.2
90% rank range
5 to 98
Maryland25 to 46
Nothing about Maryland’s 3-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-0
schedule odds
1 in 2
rank key
0.33
power
8.7³³
résumé
60.0
gap
+51.3
90% rank range
21 to 117
Utah3 to 23
Nothing about Utah’s 3-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-0
schedule odds
1 in 5
rank key
0.66
power
20.5¹
résumé
60.0
gap
+39.5
90% rank range
4 to 87

It is supposed to shrink, and here is whether it did

September should move a long way when January grades it, and less every week after that. If it ever stopped falling, the weekly poll was never worth reading, and this is the table that would show it.

In week 5 the average top-25 team was 5.24 places out of position. By week 15 it was 0.44. A near-flat figure late in the season is not a boring page. It is the divergence curve doing its job.

week	top 25 moved	mean \|Δ\| top 25	mean \|Δ\| all 136	max \|Δ\| all 136
5	25 of 25	5.24	7.18	28
6	25 of 25	4.00	5.79	25
7	23 of 25	3.88	5.96	23
8	21 of 25	3.24	5.40	24
9	19 of 25	2.28	4.03	18
10	17 of 25	2.40	3.78	17
11	17 of 25	1.64	3.15	13
12	19 of 25	1.60	2.34	13
13	16 of 25	0.80	1.72	8
14	10 of 25	0.56	0.97	5
15	8 of 25	0.44	0.91	5
16	10 of 25	0.48	0.91	5

columns 2 and 3 are a tally over the 25 rows each week published · columns 4 and 5 are printed from 2025/divergence.json

What the two columns measure

Nearly every rankings page carries a plus-minus column, and on screen it looks exactly like this one. That column is the distance between this week’s list and last week’s. This is the distance between what week 3 said and what week 3 should have said, and the two are different measurements that happen to render as the same arrow.

Any ranking that rebuilds the whole season each week is already re-ranking its own past. That is how it works rather than a scandal. Keeping the old answer around is cheap. Publishing the gap is not, and this is the page that does it.

Move one of the settings behind this and watch the board answer →